The Emergence of French Medical Entomology: The Influence of Universities, the Institut Pasteur and Military Physicians (1890–c.1938)

The term medical entomology (entomologie médicale) was used for the first time in France around 1910. As far as France is concerned, the study of arthropods as critical components in the propagation of severe diseases such as yellow fever, trypanosomiasis, and malaria gradually emerged after 1890 in three main types of institution: civilian faculties of medicine, a specialized military medical training centre, and the Institut Pasteur. In each of these settings, medical entomology developed from different rationales and interests, and came to influence different spheres of activity. Although identified very early in France—in the last decade of the nineteenth century—as the necessary associate of parasitology and the study of tropical diseases, it was nearly twenty years before medical entomology became a defined field of knowledge within the wider discipline of entomology. The present article surveys the respective roles of the three teaching and research institutions that played a part in the emergence of medical entomology in France. Not only were these institutions the major actors in the country at the time, but, despite their differences, they were destined in some way closely to collaborate or to create parallel international networks of research and teaching while generating a complex array of subsidiary institutions, nearly all dealing with tropical diseases.